# Digital Ocean + GitHub
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [March 21, 2024, 9:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436 "2024-03-21T21:04:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sinrider](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sinrider)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2024, 9:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/1 "2024-03-21T21:04:39Z")
I’ve installed the Discourse droplet on Digital Ocean and I want to create a repo that will allow me to download the codebase, make changes and then upload it back to Digital Ocean. I’m at a bit of loss, since it is being run on containers and I don’t see the base directory for where the site is being hosted from when I SSH into the droplet.
Any help would be great.
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### Author:  [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2024, 10:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/2 "2024-03-21T22:48:27Z")
Hi Lynn. 👋
From [the install steps](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md):
> ### 6. Install Discourse
>
> Clone the [Official Discourse Docker Image](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker) into `/var/discourse`.
>
> ```plaintext
> sudo -s
> git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker.git /var/discourse
> cd /var/discourse
> chmod 700 containers
>
> ```
>
> You will need to be root through the rest of the setup and bootstrap process.
So that repo would be cloned at `/var/discourse`. 👍
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2024, 12:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/3 "2024-03-22T00:06:54Z")
> [@sinrider](#):
>
> I want to create a repo that will allow me to download the codebase, make changes and then upload it back to Digital Ocean
You probably don’t want to do this. Although it might appear to be a great idea at the time, making changes to Discourse is best achieved with its fantastic plugin, theme and theme component architecture its developers have painstakingly provided for our benefit.
Maintaining a fork makes life very boring and unproductive and should arguably only be pursued if you intend to PR within a short timespan.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2024, 1:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/4 "2024-03-22T01:07:41Z")
> [@merefield](#):
>
> Maintaining a fork makes life very boring and unproductive
Not boring. But very unproductive. Unless you want to pay up have several engineers whose full time job is keeping up with seeing that your fork still works, you want to use plugins or theme components. The only group that did that was very sorry.
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### Author:  [@sinrider](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sinrider)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2024, 1:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/5 "2024-03-24T01:35:24Z")
Thanks gang. We are going to stick with theme/component/plugin dev for modifications.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 1:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-github/300436/6 "2024-04-23T01:35:36Z")
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